Thoughts On Ribbit

Hat tip to Stuart Henshall for his link to pal and client Thomas Howe's critical first look analysis on Ribbit.

Both Stuart and Thomas are constantly pulling things together with voice and collaboration, so their viewpoints should matter.

I for one like the idea of more development tools being put out there and welcome the large cadre of new developers coming into the voice applications game. Thomas Howe has to stand at the top or pretty close to it. His company already has some real live paying clients, who in turn have real users and thus is able to land real contracts based on what he has done, delivered and proven. His insight is magnified even more when he riffs on a post by Disruptive Analysis' leader Dean Bubley, who wrote about the upcoming eComm 2008 conference slated for March in Mountain View.

So here comes the rub.

There is a big difference between garage developers and real development teams that can turn out a product that someone can buy and actually implement. Thus its the "professional" piece of the "services" that will matter, not just the large number of "garagistas" who come along and write some code based upon the impressive toolkit that Ribbit is creating to work with Adobe's FLEX platform.